As everyone gets ready to either watch or avoid the Academy Awards tonight, the number of articles being posted about them is exploding. I read one today on Yahoo.com about how Driving Miss Daisy won the award in 1989, but Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing was not even nominated. The article went on to detail how race relations in the movies has always been employment based. The black person is hired as a maid or driver, the friendship is made, and the employer’s racism is lessened. This concept was an important one for me, as I had just finished reading The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar.
Set in India, where classism is real and continuing, this is a story of the bonds of friendship that are forged between employee and employer. Sera may be well off, with a beautiful, pregnant daughter and son-in-law living with her after her husband passed away three years earlier, but there is darkness within her. Her husband is survived by a mother, incapacitated by a stroke, who had dominated Sera’s adult life, intent on extracting pain. This trait was passed to her son, who’s need to dominate Sera included the use of his fists.
Bhima, an uneducated but hard working woman, had been courted by Gopol and lived a happy life, until an industrial accident robbed them of 3 fingers, worker’s compensation, and dignity. As Gopol’s slide to despair and pain makes him turn to drink, the joy and caring goes out of the family.
The story, as it unwinds, begins with Bhima’s shame as she sees her 17 year old granddaughter Maya is pregnant and unmarried. Throughout this book, Bhima is on a quest for find justice. What we find, however, is that even with an education, women are at the mercy of men in this society. We also find that women can be even crueler when asked to take sides.
Bhima has given her life and energy to Sera and her family, yet is not allowed to sit on the furniture or use the dishes. While Sera has helped Bhima when Maya came to her, taking an interest in Maya’s education, when faced with realities of Bhima’s life, such as where she lives, Sera remains apart. It is in the end, when real evil is revealed, that the façade is pulled down.
In order to not spoil the story, I will leave it at this: in India the voices of women are marginalized, and the voices of poor women are silenced. In the larger world, this story is yet another tale that in a simple relationship where one holds the power, you need to understand this and not give up too much of yourself. Unless you are fully treated as equal, in the book by being allowed to sit on the chairs to drink from the glasses, in the movie by being allowed to come in to sit next to Miss Daisy as they hear MLK, Jr. there will always remain a barrier to equality. Even if there is deep companionship. This struggle continues today, not just in India, but everywhere that people are not equal. Economic, spiritual, racial, and gender identifications are all ways in which the world has been divided, and remains so. Those in power, as in the book, will do everything to keep their power, regardless of the cost to others.
The Source 4 Books 